As the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) will be 10 years old in 2005, the Standing Committee of the Agreement has declared the second weekend of April (9 and 10 April 2005) as the Migratory Waterbird Days (MWDs). We believe that this new international event within the AEWA area will become popular, will prove to be useful and will be celebrated annually throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

The idea behind the MWDs is to draw the attention of the public and the authorities to the importance of the local and national levels as an integral part of the flyway conservation of migratory waterbird species. The emphasis of this year's celebrations will be on the 10th anniversary of the Agreement. The Secretariat has prepared a poster featuring the history of the Agreement to date, to be distributed mainly during the MWDs.

In a total of 20 countries, state institutions and NGOs have undertaken to organise various events locally and/or nationally, such as press conferences, birdwatching excursions, etc. They have also expressed their interest in producing the poster in their own languages. For this purpose the Secretariat has provided small grants to some countries to facilitate the printing of these posters. As soon as we receive reports on these events they will be published on the Agreement's website. Please keep a lookout for them, and if for some reason you are unable to take part in the MWDs this year, please make a note in your calendars that next year the MWDs will be on 8 and 9 April 2006. We wish you all an enjoyable celebration!